TY - JOUR
T1 - Information systems and technology sourcing strategies of e-Retailers for value chain enablement
AU - Tsai, Juliana Y.
AU - Santanam, Raghu
AU - Shao, Benjamin
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors are grateful to the anonymous referees for their constructive comments on the earlier version of the manuscript, which helped to improve the presentation of the paper considerably. They also would like to acknowledge the insightful suggestions of Michael Goul, Uday Kulkarni, Robert St. Louis, and Trent Spaulding. Juliana Tsai thanks the W.P. Carey School of Business and the Information Systems Department for doctoral research funding. The authors are entirely responsible for the contents of this paper, and the usual disclaimer applies. Appendix A
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - In the e-Retail industry, a well-designed IT infrastructure is essential in creating a tightly integrated value chain and delivering high quality service. With intense competition for market share and profits, information systems and technology (IST) sourcing decisions are becoming increasingly important to e-Retail firms to support continued growth and market responsiveness. Drawing on the contingency theory, we examine organizational and environmental factors that influence an e-Retailer's IST sourcing strategy of make versus buy in enabling its value chain activities, and we also look at firm-level performance impacts of IST sourcing decisions that involve bundling across value chain activities. We test the proposed model and hypotheses using a panel data set of 307 firms over the period of 2006-2010. The results show that firms that make transformative IT investments tend to source a smaller portion of IST for their e-Retail value chain activities than firms that pursue automate or informate as their strategic role for IT investment. Capabilities are positively associated with IST sourcing. Firms experienced in e-Retail are more likely to build rather than buy their IST. In addition, we find mimicking behavior for IST sourcing among firms in the same merchandizer category. We find that IT strategic role is strongly associated with growth metric, whereas sourcing decisions predominantly impact operational performance measures. There is partial evidence that alignment between IT strategic role and IST sourcing decisions results in better performance effects. Moreover, complementary IST sourcing of synergistic marketing and sales activities positively impacts Web sales and conversion rate, but the sourcing combination of logistics, operations, and sales activities is associated with lower Web sales and conversion rate.
AB - In the e-Retail industry, a well-designed IT infrastructure is essential in creating a tightly integrated value chain and delivering high quality service. With intense competition for market share and profits, information systems and technology (IST) sourcing decisions are becoming increasingly important to e-Retail firms to support continued growth and market responsiveness. Drawing on the contingency theory, we examine organizational and environmental factors that influence an e-Retailer's IST sourcing strategy of make versus buy in enabling its value chain activities, and we also look at firm-level performance impacts of IST sourcing decisions that involve bundling across value chain activities. We test the proposed model and hypotheses using a panel data set of 307 firms over the period of 2006-2010. The results show that firms that make transformative IT investments tend to source a smaller portion of IST for their e-Retail value chain activities than firms that pursue automate or informate as their strategic role for IT investment. Capabilities are positively associated with IST sourcing. Firms experienced in e-Retail are more likely to build rather than buy their IST. In addition, we find mimicking behavior for IST sourcing among firms in the same merchandizer category. We find that IT strategic role is strongly associated with growth metric, whereas sourcing decisions predominantly impact operational performance measures. There is partial evidence that alignment between IT strategic role and IST sourcing decisions results in better performance effects. Moreover, complementary IST sourcing of synergistic marketing and sales activities positively impacts Web sales and conversion rate, but the sourcing combination of logistics, operations, and sales activities is associated with lower Web sales and conversion rate.
KW - Complementary sourcing
KW - Contingency theory
KW - Information systems and technology sourcing strategy
KW - Make versus buy
KW - e-Retail value chain
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84885948052&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84885948052&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jom.2013.07.009
DO - 10.1016/j.jom.2013.07.009
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84885948052
SN - 0272-6963
VL - 31
SP - 345
EP - 362
JO - Journal of Operations Management
JF - Journal of Operations Management
IS - 6
ER -